Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“How’s that, Ms. Belgrave?”

“Something in a well,” she said. “And old rusty chain going down into a well, and something down there.”

A search ofwells all over the country divulged no end of curious debris, including a skeleton that turned out to be that of a large dog. No human remains were found, however, and the search was halted when Peggy Mae came home from Indianapolis. She’d gone there for an abortion, expecting to be back in a day or so, but there had been medical complications. She’d been in the hospital there for a week, never stopping to think that her parents were afraid for her life, or that the police were probing abandoned wells for her dismembered corpse.

Sylvia got a call when the girl turned up. “The important thing is she’s all right,” he said, “although I wouldn’t be surprised if right about now she wishes she was dead. Point is you didn’t let us down. You were trying to home in on something that wasn’t there in the first place, since she was alive and well all along.”

“I’m glad she’s alive,” she said, “but disappointed in myself. All of that business about wells.”

“Maybe you were picking up something from fifty years ago,” he said. “Who knows how many wells there are, boarded up and forgotten years ago? And who knows what secrets one or two of them might hold?”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

Perhaps he was. But all the same the few days when the police were looking in old wells was a professional high water mark for her. After the search was called off, after Peggy Mae came home in disgrace, it wasn’t quite so hard to get an appointment with Sylvia Belgrave.

Three nights ofnightmares and fitful sleep, three days of headaches. And, awake or asleep, a constant parade of hideous images.

It was hard to keep herself from running straight to the police. But she forced herself to wait, to let time take its time. And then on the morning after the third unbearable night she showered away the stale night sweat and put on a skirt and a blouse and a flowered hat. She sat in the garden with a cup of hot water and lemon juice, then rinsed it in the kitchen sink and went to her car.

The car was a Taurus, larger and sleeker and, certainly, newer than her old Tempo, but it did no more and no less than the Tempo had done. It conveyed her from one place to another. This morning it brought her to the police station, and her feet brought her the rest of the way — into the building, and through the corridors to Detective Norman Jeffcote’s office.

“Ms. Belgrave,” he said. “Have a seat, won’t you?”

His hair was longer than it had been when he’d come to her house. He hadn’t regrown it entirely, hadn’t once again taken to combing it over the bald spot, but neither was it as flatteringly short as she’d advised him to keep it.

And there was something unsettling about his energy. Maybe it had been a mistake to come.

She sat down and winced, and he asked her if she was all right. “My head,” she said, and pressed her fingertips to her temples.

“You’ve got a headache?”

“Endless headaches. And bad dreams, and all the rest of it.”

“I see.”

“I didn’t want to come,” she said. “I told myself not to intrude, not to be a nuisance. But it’s just like the first time, when that girl disappeared.”

“Melissa Sporran.”

“And now there’s a little boy gone missing,” she said.

“Eric Ackerman.”

“Yes, and his address is no more than half a mile from my house. Maybe that’s why all these impressions have been so intense.”

“Do you know where he is now, Ms. Belgrave?”

“I don’t,” she said, “but I do feel connected to him, and I have the strong sense that I might be able to help.”

He nodded. “And your hunches usually pay off.”

“Not always,” she said. “That was confusing the year before last, sending you to look in wells.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect.”

“Surely not.”

He leaned forward, clasped his hands. “The Ackerman boy, Ms. Belgrave. You think he’s all right?”

“Oh, I wish I could say yes.”

“But you can’t.”

“The nightmares,” she said, “and the headaches. If he were all right, the way the Turlock girl was all right—”

“There’d be no dreams.”

“That’s my fear, yes.”

“So you think the boy is...”

“Dead,” she said.

He looked at her for a long moment before he nodded. “I suppose you’d like some article connected with the boy,” he said. “A piece of clothing, say.”

“If you had something.”

“How’s this?” he said, and opened a drawer and brought out a teddy bear, its plush fur badly worn, the stitches showing where it had been ripped and mended. Her heart broke at the sight of it and she put her hand to her chest.

“We ought to have a record of this,” he said, propping a tape recorder on the desk top, pressing a button to start it recording. “So that I don’t miss any of the impressions you pick up. Because you can probably imagine how frantic the boy’s parents are.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So do you want to state your name for the record?”

“My name?”

“Yes, for the record.”

“My name is Sylvia Belgrave.”

“And you’re a psychic counselor?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re here voluntarily.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why don’t you take the teddy bear, then. And see what you can pick up from it.”

She thought she’d braced herself, but she was unprepared for the flood of images that came when she took the little stuffed bear in her hands. They were more vivid than anything she’d experienced before. Perhaps she should have expected as much; the dreams, and the headaches, too, were worse than they’d been after Melissa Sporran’s death, worse than years ago, when Gordon Sawyer drowned.

“Smothered,” she managed to say. “A pillow or something like it over his face. He was struggling to breathe and... and he couldn’t.”

“And he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“And would you happen to know where, Ms. Belgrave?”

Her hands tightened on the teddy bear. The muscles in her arms and shoulders went rigid, bracing to keep the images at bay.

“A hole in the ground,” she said.

“A hole in the ground?”

“A basement!” Her eyes were closed, her heart pounding. “A house, but they haven’t finished building it yet. The outer walls are up but that’s all.”

“A building site.”

“Yes.”

“And the body’s in the basement.”

“Under a pile of rags,” she said.

“Under a pile of rags. Any sense of where, Ms. Belgrave? There are a lot of houses under construction. It would help if we knew what part of town to search.”

She tried to get her bearings, then realized she didn’t need them. Her hand, of its own accord, found the direction and pointed.

“North and west,” he said. “Let’s see, where’s there a house under construction, ideally one they stopped work on? Seems to me there’s one just off Radbourne Road about a quarter of a mile past Six Mile Road. You think that might be the house, Ms. Belgrave?”

She opened her eyes. He was reaching across to take the teddy bear from her. She had to will her fingers to open to release it.

“We’ve got some witnesses,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “A teenager mowing a lawn who saw Eric Ackerman getting into a blue Taurus just like the one you’ve got parked across the street. He even noticed the license plate, but then it’s the kind you notice, isn’t it? 2ND SITE. Second sight, eh? Perfect for your line of work.”

God, her head was throbbing.